Dr Mark's Tardis

On a cold night camping my morning plan failed. I was going to jump out of bed switch on the  Eberspaecher heater and hide under the duvet until it wormed up. But the battery was flat, or at least too flat to provide the high current required at start up. To cut a long story short, the panels at 100W each could only give 5W in the winter. Not enough to boost the batteries up. They need 14.4 V for a couple of hours a day. So now I've regularly got the charger out to top it up.  Charger is a very nice Victron IP67 Bluesmart charge. With bluetooth monitoring and 25A power rating.

Once the engine oil leak had been cleared up, it became apparent that there was, and always had been a steering rack fluid leak. Just weeping a bit from the bottom. Indeed one purpose of fixing the engine oil leak was because it could be masking other problems. The rack had been refurbished (see blog)  twelve months ago and was still under warranty. And at some point the hydraulic inlet thread was badly damaged. The steering specialists said to send it back. The could not repair it so they sourced another one for an extra hundred pounds and sent both racks back to me. To be sure of good joints I went to Pirtek in Milton Keynes to have some more metal pipes made (from the hoses to the rack. Plus new unions and special hydraulic washers that should be better than the old copper ones. This time I knew they took off the ball joints, so I did that myself and counted the threads - to replace them myself for a good approximation for the tracking. Once completed the steering wheel needed...

 An ititating oil leak from the PTO where the selector shaft enters. I was considering removing a striping the PTO to fix the leak. Or even finding a new PTO. I was told parts were not available for refurbishing them. but Chris Super Cooper Mobile mechanic . Suggesting looking to see if the seal fitted from outside. This seemed implausible. but with an inspection light and camera it was indeed the case. The old one came out easily and once out it was clearly metric 16mm shaft 28mm diameter seal, 7mm thick. The amazing simply bearings had two seals to match 16x28x7_SC (R21/SC) and an _TC (R23/TC) at just £2.39 each. The difference was that one had a lip for a dust seal. So I fitted that, even though the one that came off did not  have the extra lip. Job done, no leak. Let me say again how good Simply bearings are. They have a vast catalogue, which is very easy to look up seals by dimension - metric and Imperial. And delivery is fast.

 The gutter beneath the windscreen was leaky. Again, this showed up after the oil leak was fixed and I saw a wet patch under the engine. Well, wet it was - water. The problem does not show up well in the photos. After a couple of attempts this was the fix: 1) Throw away old rubber seal. 2) Clean as much rust as possible from the gutter, leaving several obvious holes. 3) Prime the metalwork with good quality primer (Rustoleum grey anti-rust primer) 4) Glue on some pieces of aluminium angle 15 x 15 x 1.5mm Using copious amounts of still all glue. One failed attempt had a lot of glue, but still not enough. 2 x 1m for £7.20 from EBay Metals shop 5) A couple of coats of rustoleum white 6) A new rubber from seals direct . 20mm bulb to fit panel 2.5mm to 5mm £21.35 incl. Vat and delivery Old gutter de-rusted and primed.

 The old bumper was always rusty and bits rusted away even. Despite layers of rustoleum on the outside, they never stopped the rust eating away from the eds and insides. But not large sections have dropped off. Time to do something. ... and that's the good side. It was a strange story. After months of research I'd narrowed it down to two options that were both going to cost me about £1000. Import a new one from China or get the old one rebuilt in the UK. I'd identified T and G Promech as a company in Poole willing to take to on and T&J tubes who would bend up sections of the 60mm diameter tube. There are only a few companies witht he capability to put custom bends in 60mm tube - and most of those are not interested in a small job. Technically it is called rolling rather than bending and uses different tooling compared with putting in a fixed radius bend. The day before I set of to Poole, with a wallet,  got a call to say that someone was selling a reasonably good bum...

Having been parked up for a year now, a long list of jobs has gradually been completed. Engine mounts was the hardest. New Bose speakers from an Audi, was the most satisfying.  Just for the record here is the long list to June 2020: ........

Who designed these heater controls? I could never imagine anything so complicated. But it has to combine three control wires and switches. Mine had no control for windscreen vs. feet, and the fan worked intermittently. I was ready to put a new, separate,  control wire in the dashboard. But the a genuine Iveco one came up on eBay What a bargain at £25.99 And what a horrendous job to fit .